


Valiarde House

by pentapus



Category: Fall of Ile-Rien - Martha Wells
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, a house full of Aelin and Andrien, there are some babies here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5453516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small flock of children drifted chaotically around the courtyard, expanding and collapsing, and occasionally parting before Ilias as though he were a ship cutting through the waves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valiarde House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yopumpkinhead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/gifts).



The courtyard of Valiarde House glowed bright in the early morning. Sunlight slanting over the walls bounced around the open space, giving the whitewashed walls a warm yellow glow almost from within. A group of women sat on the portico, weaving. Small children leaned against their backs, playing with simple wooden puzzles. Someone had spread rugs over the cool tiles to protect against the bite in the air, and the children old enough for simple chores had put stacks of blankets out on the benches. 

Tremaine had a couch to herself buried under blankets. She was writing plays. One of the older children had made her a cushioned lap desk so she could write in the middle of everything. Tremaine didn't always like having company that spoke to her, but she liked keeping track of her household. She liked to have her family near her. 

Ilias circled the courtyard underneath the fruit trees, a baby over his shoulder that was probably going to vomit on him soon. A small flock of children drifted chaotically around the space, expanding and collapsing, and parting before Ilias as though he were a ship cutting through the waves. He was relatively certain not all of them lived here.

Ilias hadn’t realized when he lived at Andrien that being young and being with Giliead had kept him just a little bit apart from all -- this. The house, the children, the rash on little Eleni’s neck he noticed as she ran by, that he'd have to mention to her parents later. Valiarde House was different. Here Ilias was an adult just beginning to feel his joints creak, and he was married to the head of the household. He was neck deep in children and accounts and daily maintenance. And Giliead was with _him._ Ilias tied Giliead to this house as Gil had once tied Ilias to his. 

Illias pressed his nose to the warm skin on the back of the baby’s head, soft as rabbit's fur with its fuzz of dark hair. This was the only place the _sweet baby smell_ Karima had spoken of with such nostalgia was actually sweet and not the omnipresent sour milk smell of baby vomit. There. That was nice. 

The baby made a experimental scream that ended in a giggle and a tiny fist bashed against Ilias’ chest. Just a week ago, screaming had been an unhappy sound; now it was a sound for every mood like the boy had just discovered his lungs and had found the discovery good. 

Ilias looked around the courtyard for someone to switch shifts. Gil was expecting his help with packing and presumably would appreciate the use of both of Ilias’ arms. The women had their hands full, weaving, and none of the older children were in the courtyard. Tremaine had put her lap desk down, staring thoughtfully out the open gates towards the sea.

Ilias sidestepped into her line of sight with a hopeful look.

“Get back to me when it can talk,” she said dryly. It was an old joke, basically a refrain, and he tipped his head to the sky with a wounded sigh. 

His dramatics were cut short by the feeling of wet warmth flooding his neck. Sour milk smell hit a second later. Ilias grabbed blindly for his spit rag -- mispositioned again! -- and went off to find Gil. 

Gil had three of the Aelin with him in the back atrium near the garden. They had a cart half filled with trade goods and supplies. They would leave two days from now, or three, whenever Gil said the god had blessed the weather. There was a wizard in the port of Edornas. The Aelin would travel with them as far as Hythia, an inland market on the way to -- yet safely distant from -- Edornas. Ilias hauled himself up, scrambling only a little less gracefully over the carefully secured packs, tucking the baby under his arm for one part the climb, shifting him over his shoulder for the next part.

“When do they start talking?” Ilias said. 

“Priva is three,” Gil said, not looking up from his rope knotting. “She talks. Ennet has started, he’s a year.”

The flock of children from the courtyard came laughing through the door and down the steps into the garden. Ilias hopped off the cart in time to be handed a second baby by a pleased looking girl now running pell mell for the house. Ilias looked down at the new baby -- a slightly pudgier face, a pointier nose, and sighed. He should stop opening his arms when people shoved babies at him. He guessed, “Paren?”

“Mari,” Gil said, yanking hard at a rope line. There had been three new babies in Valiarde House in the last year. Mari meant this was Davret’s.

“Ilias! Sorry, Iannas was supposed to be watching her.” It was Calit, eighteen this year and taller than Ilias by half a head. Noticing the baby in Ilias’ other arm, Calit’s face took on one of those _reluctant hero_ expressions from Tremaine’s plays. “Him too, I suppose.”

And then Ilias was carrying _no_ babies. His hands were gloriously free. He was still wearing a soiled spit rag one one shoulder, but Illias the adult whose joints creaked had learned that the small victories were the sweetest. 

Calit reappeared a little later with some of the older kids, armed with Tremaine’s instructions to help them pack. 

Ilias looked the children over: no babies in sight.

"Not that I'm not grateful,” Ilias said casually, “but where is -- Tremaine took him?”

The kids laughed, delighted at Ilias’ great joke. Tremaine _delegated._ They ran off with Gil’s list of packages to retrieve. 

Ilias looked after them, trying to decide if he was worried. Babies were… sturdy. "You know, this felt seamless when I was a kid.”

Gil looked up then to stare at him. 

“Aside from leaving me to die on a hilltop,” Ilias amended. “I guess that was a pretty big seam.”

At the sound of running footsteps, only one set, caused Gil and Ilias to look towards the house. 

An olive-skinned Aelin boy ran up the cart, focused on Giliead like a diving gull. “News! Visolela,” he gasped, “is going ahead with her plan to send a trading party to Dyriath.”

“The wizard is in Edornas,” Gil said flatly. “They have to sail past it to get to Dyriath.”

“They say they can head out to sea and be far enough away.”

“That never works,” Ilias said, exasperated. 

“She says it's their livelihood, and anyway, that the wizard isn't well established.” The boy hesitated, eyes drifting toward the ground. “They also say that it's not their fault you're traveling slowly with the Aelin.”

Gil gave the cart a look of weary weary resignation. He turned to Ilias: “We might need to -- “

Ilias shook his head.“No, we made it clear this was what we were doing. Visolela’s crew don't need protection on the road like the Aelin do, and we need the time to talk to people fleeing Edornas. If we try to beat Visolela’s party to Dyriath, we're just going to get there with no information and be expected to get things cleared up by day one. Or die trying. That's the most likely outcome really.”

He turned to the messenger. “Did you tell -- “

“Yes,” the kid said. He looked as relieved to say it as Ilias was to hear it. 

Tremaine was already striding out of the house wearing her good Syprian clothes, throwing a shawl over her shoulders that Ilias had spent too much money on, traded from places very far away. She stomped up to the cart with the kind of sugary smile that meant Tremaine had considered murder as a solution and wasn’t quite willing to rule it out yet. 

“Husband,” she said, batting her eyelashes in a way that ought to send a shiver down the spine of everyone of Pasima’s relatives, “As a ranking woman of this house, I am off to discuss weighty matters with suicidal idiots.” She looked around, “Where's my prop?”

Ilias looked too. There were no babies in sight. “No idea.”

Tremaine hesitated. It was too deeply ingrained in her not to show that kind of blunt affection, so she couldn't quite say, ‘I wanted a kiss goodbye.’ “Well,” she said, “I guess there was no reason for me to be in a good mood while I do this.”

"Is Karima coming?” Ilias asked. 

“I sent Lomin over. Karima will get there… later. I don’t need a local guide for this, and I want them to have a strong sense of being _saved_ when she walks in the door with a compromise.”

Ilias impulsively bent down out of the cart and kissed her temple. “If you keep writing comedies, no one's going to be afraid of you anymore.”

Tremaine glowered. “Dark bloody comedies.”

“A crowd pleaser,” Giliead called from the other side of a bundle of textiles. 

Tremaine sighed. 

After she left, Ilias sat down in an unpacked corner of the cart and started thinking weaponry. It would be easy to bring too much with the cart and forget they'd be making the final leg on foot. Gil hmmed thoughtfully, tying things down as Ilias thought out loud. 

Ilias looked up when he heard a gurgle. 

A pair of hands held the baby blindly over the edge of the cart in a reasonable guess of Ilias’ location. The baby wriggled and let out an unhappy scream. 

“Ah,” Ilias said, reaching up. 

“Adyna fed him!” a young voice piped up out of sight.

“Wait, just now fed him -- ” Ilias gave the baby an experimental shake.

 _Giggle!_ the baby said, eyes crinkling with uncomplicated joy. Abruptly, opaque white liquid started waterfalling from one side of his smile. 

"No,” Ilias pleaded desperately. “How do you always have more?”

But still, his fatigue addled brain couldn’t help lighting up at that smile. Did everyone notice how sweetly this baby smiled? How bright his eyes were? The boy had Tremaine’s nose, which Tremaine hated to hear and which Ilias liked to tell everyone. Today, he’d try to be nicer. Tremaine was going to be in a foul mood when she got back and hadn't been able to relieve the pressure in her breasts for hours. Luckily, his kid was always hungry. 

Tremaine denied being in her right mind when she had agreed to this, to pregnancy and the aftermath, but Ilias knew she had let herself be swayed by Ilias, by how much she hated the taboo of the curse mark -- that he’d spent a decade knowing he’d never have children. Nether of them had been prepared for the reality of the baby. In hindsight, parenting wasn't a role that fit well into either of their lives, with her writing and sliding slowly farther into running the finances of their families. With his wizard hunting. 

Still, Ilias had seen Tremaine match the kid’s giggles and fart noises when no one was looking, and she wasn't the only one looking forward to when their son could talk, when he'd have Tremaine’s sharp intellect and endlessly decisive personality, to when he could ride around Cineth on Gil’s shoulders without falling off.

Gil sat down next to Ilias and took the baby. Ilias gazed at him lovingly with gratitude. They had used to save each other from much worse things than this. 

“Hello, little Ari,” Gil said, bouncing him with a hand under his butt. He handed Ilias a sword with his other hand. A line of characters had been painted down the blade, which meant it was probably cursed. “Here, tell me if it needs sharpening.”

Ilias knew he wasn't looking at the sword as he said dopily, “Great, just great.”

Gil sighed, laughing. “Get back to me when you’re not sleep deprived.”

Ari smacked him in the eye.

Ilias grinned up at Gil. “A real fighter.”


End file.
